But did you know the benefits of a good night’s sleep go way beyond a healthy glow and improved cognitive function?

According to a study at Munich’s Max Planck Institute, a good sleep can actually increase women’s brain power.

The Mail Online reports that researchers looked at the sleep patterns of 160 adults to find out whether the amount of sleep we get has an impact on our intelligence. The scientists looked at participants sleep, as well as their ability to problem solve and reason logically. In particular, they were looking for ‘sleep spindles’, which are tiny bursts of brain activity that happen during sleep and are often linked to a higher IQ.

After they had collected their data, they cross-referenced the results with gender to find that women showed more sleep spindles during a dreamless snooze, but for men at the same stage of their sleep cycle this wasn’t the case. For the males, the increased sleep spindles happened during naps.

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‘Our results demonstrate that the association between sleep spindles and intelligence is more complex than we have assumed until now,’ explained Professor Martin Dresler.

‘There are many factors involved in intellectual abilities, and sleep is just one of them. This large study of men and women gives us a more accurate framework for the next face of research, which will involve differences in individuals’ sleep patterns.’

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